The Protocol: EigenLayer’s ‘Intersubjective Forking’ Is Objectively Not Done

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INTERSUBJECTIFYING THE FORKIFICATION: The Ethereum restaking project EigenLayer, whose plan to repurpose the Ethereum blockchain’s security to hordes of additional protocols has prompted systemic risk warnings from Vitalik Buterin himself, released a 43-page whitepaper on its forthcoming EIGEN token – more than twice as long as the original 19-page whitepaper on EigenLayer. To address the concerns, the project, led by the sesquipedalian computer engineer Sreeram Kannan, came up with a new plan for something called “intersubjective forking.” The purpose of this mechanism would be to take care of “instances of misbehavior that cannot be objectively identified on-chain, yet any two reasonable observers would agree that a penalty is deserved.” If such an “intersubjective fault” were to occur, the EIGEN token could be forked without having to fork the main Ethereum blockchain. Are you with me so far? Well, there’s a catch, according to a blog post: Very little of this will be functional when the EIGEN token launches: “With its design being completely novel, the concept needs to be absorbed and discussed widely by the ecosystem participants. The initial implementation of intersubjective staking at this launch mirrors the full protocol to only a limited extent. However, there are still several parameters that need to be determined for full actuation.” Such a not-really-fully-functional system would echo EigenLayer’s mainnet launch a few weeks ago, where, as detailed by Coindesk, crucial promised features, including the paramount “slashing” and “attributable security” mechanisms, were held back from the launch, because they weren’t ready. It goes without saying that a lot of these details were lost on crypto traders who had poured some $15 billion of deposits into the project, many of them merely hoping to qualify for the EIGEN token airdrop that roughly zero people in crypto doubted would eventually come. The parsimoniousness of the terms, however, apparently left many of these so-called airdrop farmers wanting. “Not all feedback was glowing,” as the Bankless newsletter put it, and complaints centered partly on the token’s initial period of “non-transferability.” Only 15% of the tokens will go to the “stakedrop” – the Eigen Foundation’s term – and more than half of the tokens will be allocated to investors and early contributors, with unlocks starting after just one year.

In the EIGEN token whitepaper’s diagram, “faults that can be collectively assigned” fall between “faults with objective causes” and “faults influenced by individual perception.”

CHANGING THINGS UP: In a crackdown on creators of blockchain protocols suspected of enabling money laundering, U.S. authorities have indicted Samourai Wallet founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill on charges of money laundering conspiracy. Rodriguez has entered a plea of not guilty. Samourai Wallet, whose servers have been seized, was marketed as a bitcoin wallet providing privacy through a service called “Whirlpool.” U.S. authorities, under President Joe Biden’s administration, are intensifying their efforts against mixers like Samourai and Bitcoin Fog, which were previously arrested in 2021 and 2023 respectively. This development has ignited a debate about the legal status of open-source software, with questions surrounding whether code is considered speech. Last week, companies behind popular wallets such as Phoenix and Wasabi announced restrictions for U.S. users, raising concerns over the potential impact of regulatory pressure on blockchain innovation within the United States.

Schematic illustrating basic concepts of how Samourai Whirlpool works. (Samourai)

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Protocol Village

As a blockchain technology analyst, I’m here to share with you some noteworthy developments from the previous week in the realm of blockchain tech. Let’s delve into the most significant upgrades and latest news that have emerged in our Protocol Village column.

1. SEDA, a data transmission and computation network that enables a permissionless environment for developers to deploy data feeds, announced the launch of its mainnet genesis event.

Luke Dashjr, who heads up the Bitcoin mining pool Ocean with the support of Jack Dorsey, announced that miners can now receive their Bitcoin payments through the Lightning Network using the BOLT12 technology.

3. Bitcoin layer-2 project Stacks announced a “significant” delay to the activation of its highly anticipated Nakamoto upgrade, citing the need for eight more weeks of development time. In a blog post, Mitchell Cuevas, who heads the Stacks Open Internet Foundation, wrote: “Shifting dates this late in the game is not fun and I recognize this is disappointing.”

5. Ether.Fi, the biggest liquid restaking protocol in the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem, has integrated SSV.Network’s distributed validator technology (DVT) into its platform, according to the team. “In recent weeks, Ether.Fi has onboarded almost 2,000 validators to SSV.Network,” according to a press release, out of about 40,000 overall.

Money Center

Fundraisings

Movement Labs co-founders Cooper Scanlon and Rushi Manche (Movement Labs)

Data and Tokens

Regulatory and Policy

Bitcoin Price Snaps Record 7-Month Winning Streak

Despite the significant drop of 26% for the CoinDesk 20 index of digital assets, Bitcoin held up better and experienced a smaller loss compared to its counterparts.

Calendar

May 1-4: Bitcoin++, Austin, Texas.

May 9-10: Bitcoin Asia, Hong Kong.

May 18-27: Berlin Blockchain Week.

May 29-31: Consensus, Austin Texas.

May 29-31: Bitcoin Seoul.

July 8-11: EthCC, Brussels.

July 25-27: Bitcoin 2024, Nashville.

Aug. 19-21: Web3 Summit, Berlin.

Sept. 19-21: Solana Breakpoint, Singapore.

Sept. 1-7: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul.

Sept. 30-Oct. 2: Messari Mainnet, New York.

Oct. 9-11: Permissionless, Salt Lake City.

Oct. 21-22: Cosmoverse, Dubai.

Oct. 23-24: Cardano Summit, Dubai.

Oct. 30-31: Chainlink SmartCon, Hong Kong

Nov 12-14: Devcon 7, Bangkok.

Nov. 20-21: North American Blockchain Summit, Dallas.

Feb. 19-20, 2025: ConsensusHK, Hong Kong